No Accounting
by blackmare
Summary: It's a slow, slow process, doing the math on a very expensive friendship -- and the costs involved in leaving. Diverges from canon after Dying Changes Everything.
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer:** These characters belong to David Shore, FOX, and many others who aren't me. I'm making no money on them and will put them back when I'm done._

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3:34.

It's after midnight across the nation, even at his brother's place in California, two time zones away. Too late to call anyone, as if anyone wants to hear him repeat that life sucks, that he hurts, that he doesn't know what to do now. He's done so _many_ things, and it feels like nothing, and there's no one to tell.

They've all heard it already, and even if they hadn't, he's tired of repeating the same damn words.

The heat of his body makes the sheets feel like an oven; the weight that has settled on his chest, the weight that hasn't left since That Day, pushes harder as he flips onto his back. Wilson breathes, forces the air in, pushes against that intangible, invincible force.

A car alarm is going off, somewhere down the street. Someone -- two someones -- are drunk on the sidewalk, two floors below his window.

" ... at Tom's tomorrow, yeah. What? Fuck, no!" says Drunkard Number One, laughing. "Bitch hates me."

"You're fuckin' _ugly_," mocks Drunkard Number Two. "I wouldn't fuck you either." Their footsteps and curses trail away down the street, as Wilson wonders whether they know any words other than "fuck." _Fucking morons.  
_  
It's 3:35, and this night will never end, and the sheets are hot again and the sun is never, ever _fucking_ going to come up.

Wallowing in self-pity isn't nearly as much fun as people think it is. He gets up, forces in another deep breath, and goes to lower the thermostat.

He's been a month away from home, and not a single thing has gotten better. Not _one_, and there's no one he can call and say that. His cell phone lies silent on the nightstand like a dead thing, a little bird that didn't know about windshields and cars, its wings folded in on itself.

God, he's maudlin. He should get back to sleep, except he keeps trying and it makes each minute take longer. He'd get in his car and just go for a drive, but he'd only feel stupid, out that late for no reason. He'd feel so stupid he might invent a reason, drive west and not stop, head for California as if there were really any gold there -- and destroy this new life, such as it is, before it can ever take hold.

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* * *

.

No one at the staff meeting knows that Wilson didn't sleep last night. It's brief; it's polite; there are inspirational posters with mountains and soaring eagles on the beige-colored walls.

He hates the room and he hates the circumspection, the sympathy, in the faces of these strangers.

He's relieved when it's over, as relieved as he can be when all that's left of him is a dry husk wrapped in cotton. It's hard to feel anything at all.

Fortunately for Wilson, his specialty is to work without feeling too much. His patients don't know that their doctor is a dead man.

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* * *

.

Drobnik and Winters invite him for cocktails, the kind of after-work chit-chat he loathes, and he goes because he's building a life here and sometimes, laying those foundations means doing crap that you hate. He goes, knowing they asked him out of pity, knowing that they all know he's not only bereaved but friendless in this town, knowing that they will talk about him later: _It's so sad; he's so young, isn't he; did you hear he's been divorced three times?  
_  
The moment he approaches their group he feels the conversation shift like a tectonic plate. They're changing their landscape to accommodate the ghost at his side. He had thought that people would quit doing that once he left Princeton.

Wilson orders a gin and tonic. Scotch tastes like being on the sofa in a living room he has forever left behind, and one of the people here is his boss and she doesn't need to know that he likes whiskey.

He leaves early, claiming he has files to review, which he does, but he's lying.

If he stays he'll keep drinking, not to dull the pain over Amber but to drown out Drobnik's superior laugh and Winters' endless one-upsmanship and Tania Carver's blatant attempts to _soothe_ him right into her bed.

If he stays, he'll end up drunk; if he gets drunk, he'll say something he shouldn't, something worthy of House.

They let him go when he starts reciting minutiae from the case files that await him. _If you can't beat 'em, bore 'em_, Wilson thinks, and then he wonders whether House made him this way or whether he came by it honestly.

They were friends for so long that he's really not sure anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

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.  
Dan Drobnik walks into Wilson's new office two days later, making Wilson pretend that the flash of annoyance in his expression is due to the paperwork on his desk and not the presence of a supercilious asshole.

"What can I do for you, Dan?"

"Just here to gossip," Drobnik replies, and that's when Wilson realizes the man is carrying two cups of coffee. Great. A gift is an obligation, and keeping Drobnik happy means that Drobnik won't give him shit about the tricky surgeries Wilson's patients sometimes need.

There's no House here to suggest shrinking the tumor. No House to put amphetamines in the coffee cup, either, he reminds himself, taking what Drobnik offers. "Thanks. I ... needed this today." It's the first truth he's told Drobnik all week. "So what's up?"

"You know I was in residency with House?"

"Oh, God."

"Crazy son of a bitch. Spalding, down in radiology --"

"Wait. Gary Spalding?" Radiology, formerly at PPTH, recently gone but Wilson never bothered asking where. Now he knows.

"The same." Drobnik smiles. "Look, I know you don't care to talk about this stuff, but I do have a point. Spalding tells me House gets crazier each year. Stuck a knife in a light socket?"

"Electrical outlet. You said you had a point?"

"Also said you were the guy's only friend." Drobnik smiles again, that creepy I-know-more-than-you-do smile that Wilson would sort of like to punch. "And I understand it didn't end well. House was always a vengeful bastard."

"Are you ... trying to say he might --"

"Take a guy like that, cripple him; give him a drug habit; he's suicidal anyway; think about it. You get any strange packages, better bring 'em in for x-rays."

He stares at Drobnik, stunned to see no trace of humor in the man's expression. It's like falling into the plot of a really bad movie.

"Nobody'd be surprised," Drobnik insists, "if that guy killed someone."

"House wouldn't hurt me." The words are out -- utterly certain, unwavering words -- before Wilson realizes what he's said. He checks his watch, claims to be running late for his next patient, and gets out before he can say anything else.

Drobnik's cup of coffee, Wilson _forget__s _on his desk. Let it get cold.

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* * *

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_House wouldn't hurt me.  
_  
His brain repeats his words back to him at the least opportune times for the rest of the day. _House wouldn't hurt me_, except that he did, time and time again; _House wouldn't hurt me, not even if I plunged a knife into his chest and twisted the blade around._

House would lie there gasping, _Are we okay?_

Wilson knows this for certain, because he has done it.

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* * *

.

Everyone here is nice to him. He is therefore nice in return, without fail.

Wilson stares across a cafeteria in which the only cane-wielding people are patients and the only long blonde hair belongs to that nurse whose name he can never remember.

Spalding sits down across from him, smiling as if they're confidants because they both worked at Princeton.

Nice, nice, nice. He's overheard some of the talk about himself, none of it particularly bad, none of it even that unusual. It's enough to make him wish they'd just say it to his face, though, or ask the questions outright instead of making shit up; he's used to that_. She_ wasn't nice, and neither was House.

"Think it'll finally rain this weekend?" Spalding asks, between nice polite bites of his turkey sandwich.

"I, uh ... don't know. I really should be getting back." He leaves his tray on the table, his own roast beef half-eaten. Let someone else clean up after _him_ for a change.

It strikes him, as he pushes past the cafeteria doors, that no one here is ever really going to know him.

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* * *

.

Her ghost is as present here as it ever was in New Jersey.

The vending machine in the doctors' lounge sells those lousy Zagnut bars she loved so much. Salt-and-vinegar potato chips, too, the kind House always bought. Stole.

He sees her lab coat in the hall at least three times a day, and when it's too much, when he just wants fresh air, he walks halfway to his balcony before he remembers he doesn't have a balcony anymore.

Right about the start of the second month, at three-something on another morning when he isn't asleep, he begins to admit to himself that Cameron may have been right.

Damn shame there's no one he can call and tell this to. Not unless the midnight-phone-call accuser wants to become the midnight-phone-call sinner, and dial the one number he will never forget.

It's a Saturday; no alarm clock in the morning. He takes two sleeping pills and simply waits.

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* * *


	3. Chapter 3

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The way he feels -- when he can feel at all -- is like he took a hand grenade in the general vicinity of his heart.

He looks at his reflection in the window of his car, and is a little surprised that he's not bleeding. There ought to be a giant hollow wound where his rib cage used to be. There ought to be blood everywhere, his own and hers and ... House's. House, bleeding from his head, from his ear, from -- _no_. He can't keep thinking about this. He has to take care of himself, learn _something_, or else what was the point of his ever loving Amber? What the hell was the _point?_

Wilson unlocks the Volvo, gets in, braces himself for another day just like the day before.

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* * *

.

"House is ... a fact of my life," he told her. "If you want this, if you want ... me, you have to know that. It's not going to change."

Her expression hardened, the way it always did when he talked to her as if she were someone _common_ instead of who she was. "Do you think I would respect a man who ditched his best friend for me?"

That may have been the point at which he really, truly knew he loved her.

Never, not once in the time they had together, did she even _hint_ that he might get rid of House. She even seemed to _like_ House, with that weird admiration that sometimes develops between well-matched enemies.

He sits in his car again at the end of the day, still inexplicably not bleeding, thinking about this. She knew how to get him to look out for himself; he wishes desperately that he could talk to her now, because he thinks he may be really, really fucking it up.

Drobnik's afternoon chats have become a regular thing, and Wilson can't keep avoiding them without the avoidance becoming obvious. Tania brought him _cookies_ this morning. Chocolate chip, homemade, an attempt to reach his poor wounded heart through his indifferent stomach. He ate one for show and then forced himself to take the rest to Pediatrics instead of throwing them in the trash.

Spalding wants to play golf this weekend, and Wilson might go, but he's disturbed by the thought that he might _accidentally_ knock someone in the shin with a nine-iron.

How long now, he wonders, before he's running neck-and-neck with House in the Miserable Bastard Stakes?

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* * *

.

The FedEx envelope arrives without warning on Monday, just before lunch. Wilson signs for it, gripping the pen tightly so that his fingers will stop trembling.

The handwriting on the label is as familiar to him as his own.

He has eight more patients before his day is through. The next is in five minutes, squeezed in because the one thing a cancer patient can't afford to do is wait.

Which course of action, he wonders, will distract him more? The contents of this package, or the not knowing?

_Patients first_, he decides. _Deal with House later._

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* * *

.

He gets all the way home with it, a slender cardboard time bomb in his briefcase.

Sitting at the kitchen counter (sitting, because House has a way of knocking people over, and Wilson doubts he has the strength to get up again today), he tears the envelope open and finds ... nothing.

_Wait_. A single slip of paper is in there, jammed into the bottom corner of the mailer.

Wilson pulls out a cashier's check for twenty-four thousand, eight hundred sixty-seven dollars and forty-one cents.

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* * *

.

The precision of the amount can mean only one thing: House has kept a running tally, in that messed-up head of his, of exactly how much he owes Wilson.

The _size_ of the amount means House has been keeping track from the start.

It takes Wilson very little time to figure this out, but a week later, the check sits forlorn on the kitchen counter top, waiting on an explanation that could only come from House: _why?_ Why _now?_

This could be House's desperate ploy at getting Wilson back; it could be an expensive manipulation, bait, something to compel Wilson to call; it could be an honest apology.

It could be House's way of closing out his accounts, permanently.

Every time Wilson thinks about it, that hole in his chest seems to get deeper, larger.

On the eighth day after it arrives, he gives up on the guessing game and sends the check back. He knows he'll never see that money again, but it was never about money with him and House. If nothing else, he wants House to know that.

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	4. Chapter 4

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"I thought if you wanted to know, you'd call Cuddy," Foreman says. "Why me?"

"Because you were the only one who honestly didn't care that I was leaving."

"He's _fine_. He's ... he's not your responsibility. He never was."

"How bad _is_ it?"

"We can handle him. He called off the P.I.; he's basically being ... himself."

"Foreman."

"It's not your problem anymore. You got your freedom; enjoy it. I wish I could."

"He's not okay, is he?"

"Is he _ever_ okay? You did the right thing. Stay there. Make yourself happy." A faint but unmistakable shout sounds somewhere in the background. "I need to go," Foreman says, sighing. "Take care, Wilson."

"I'm trying," murmurs Wilson, but the line's already dead.

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* * *

.

He screens his home phone calls, lets the machine get most of them, even from people he doesn't actively dislike. It is, Wilson knows, a symptom of depression, but there are people he can talk to and people he can't.

Sometimes he calls back. More often, he doesn't. The "people he can talk to" list, when he really thinks about it, is basically nonexistent. If it's work, he'll pick up. If it's his mom, he'll consider it. It's never his brother. He gets more telemarketers than anything; they flock like vultures around the fresh phone connection.

He's drinking his second glass of Cabernet on a Thursday evening when the machine picks up again. Probably the car-insurance salesmen. He gets the shift that calls at this time of night.

"Wilson."

He almost drops the glass. House sounds ... ruined.

"Don't ... if you're there, don't pretend. Please. There's ..." He pauses, and Wilson can hear him breathing, forcing the air into his lungs the same way Wilson himself has been doing for months now. "There's no one else I can call."

He's frozen, staring at the red flashing light on the machine, waiting for the rest.

"My ... my mom. She ..."

The trance breaks. He fumbles the glass, trying to set it down but spilling it instead, scrambling for the handset.

"_House_."

"Surprised you're home," House says, and Wilson can hear him trying, failing, to pull himself together. "Thought you'd be out at some pricey watering hole with Joe and Bob from the office."

"Joe is an ass and Bob's an idiot. Talk to me, House."

"I ... _can't_." House sounds like he's choking. "Not like this. It can be the last thing you ever do for me, Wilson, but ... please."

"Just ... just don't do anything stupid before I get there, okay? I can ... I can pack; I can be on the road in half an hour."

"Can I do something stupid once you arrive?"

"House."

"Yeah."

"I love you."

There's no response, but Wilson isn't expecting one. It's not a surprise -- or an insult -- when House hangs up.


	5. Chapter 5

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This part is easy: one suitcase and one garment bag.

It takes ten minutes to pack everything he'll need for a few days and another God damn funeral. House didn't say that's where they had to go, but he really didn't have to.

There'd been no time nor need for Wilson to think it over. His heart and his mouth had overridden his brain in an instant: _Talk to me, House_.

Lately, Wilson notices he only tells the absolute truth when he doesn't think first.

_House wouldn't hurt me._

_I love you._

He's halfway to the interstate before he remembers to call Winters and tell her he won't be in tomorrow. Family emergency. She isn't happy, but the truth is that Wilson doesn't care.  
.

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* * *

.

Wilson can't help being a little surprised that House hasn't changed his mind, and actually opens the door. The place looks just the same as always, clean and warm. There's no evidence of what's going on with its occupant.

"I'm hungry," House says, instead of "hello." He shuts the door hard as Wilson walks in.

Oh, no. He's not falling into _that_ old routine, not even now. "Give me some cash," Wilson replies, "and I'll order something."

"I gave you twenty-four _grand_, you idiot." Wilson startles, taking a half step back as House rounds on him. "You wouldn't take it. Don't go demanding money now."

"I could've taken twenty-four grand, and now twenty bucks is too much?"

"You want the twenty? I want to know why you sent back twenty-four thousand. Some weird kind of _spite?_"

Of all the things he thought House might be angry over, this one had never crossed his mind. He has no defense for a deed as dastardly as not taking money.

"Is this really important right now? I just got in the door. I'm tired. We can --"

"Answer the question."

"I ... didn't know what it _meant_. Okay? I didn't know if it was an apology, or if you were manipulating me, or if it was, 'here's your damn money, stay out of my life.' "

"Your idea, not mine."

"Yeah. My idea." _And look how well it's working out_. "If you'd sent it a month earlier, I'd have probably taken it. Cut my losses and run."

"You already did."

"House, I know I ... why did you call me?"

"Told you. Out of other options. Madame Florence's girls don't do road trips. Why did you come? Attracted to the blood in the water? I hear funerals are habit-forming. You'll end up doing three a week just to maintain the buzz."

"You want me to leave?"

All at once, House looks as if he could crumble. He turns away, settles on the sofa, cane between his knees. "I want to know why you're here."

"I ... won't pretend we're okay, House," he answers, collapsing, suddenly exhausted, on the other side of the couch. "But ... it never even occurred to me to make you go through this alone."

There's a rustling sound beside him; he looks over to see that House has his wallet out.

"You ... you can pay tomorrow night," Wilson says. "I've got this."

"You are maddening."

"My memory of the ... the day after Amber died is ... _foggy_," Wilson explains, "but I recall that people feed the bereaved for a minimum of twenty-four hours. It's generally a cheap proposition, since normal bereaved people don't have much of an appetite, which ... probably means _you'll_ want to hit the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet."

"I only know I'm hungry," says House, "because I _must_ be. I haven't eaten since yesterday's lunch. Technically, the twenty-four hours are up."

Wilson sits for a while, absorbing this. It was a whole _day_ before House called. He was that afraid -- of being hung up on, attacked. House seems to be okay with that, to accept it the way he always accepts that the people he loves will hurt him, abandon him, plunge that knife deep and ... Wilson can't think about this. He'll lose whatever composure he still has, and neither of them needs that now.

"It's been a long time since we ordered in," he says. "I don't know who still delivers here. I, uh ... think I'll just go pick something up from Trang's. Faster."

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* * *

.

_Bereavement 101_, Wilson thinks, starting the engine, letting himself go a little bit now that House can't see. _Keep a box of Kleenex in your car. _

For the first time since she died, he knows he's mourning more losses than one. He drives, allows it to surface, runs through a couple of tissues. This shouldn't be so _hard_, should it? This is the man who almost landed him in jail, the man who let him go on believing his _best friend_ was dying of brain cancer, the man who instigated a lawsuit against him, the man who sat there strapped to a chair with electrodes threading into his brain.

_Because you wouldn't believe he was hurting. Because he wanted you to learn to look out for yourself, to stop trying to fix the world, fix him, at your own expense._

_Because you asked him to risk his life, and he did. Because he was never your friend, remember?  
_  
Left on 56th; right on Haven; the directions are the same even when the rug has been irretrievably yanked from beneath his feet.

"I can't go back," he rasps to himself, to her, to whatever God might be listening. "It can't be ... like it was." It can't; this lesson is really all he has left of her. He's not who he was, or he would never have called House's bluff, let House walk out while a patient maybe died. He's not who he was, or he'd never have moved.

In the dark-paneled foyer at Trang's he orders Vietnamese spring rolls, a quart of _pho_, and House's favorite spicy chicken _Xa Xao Ot._

While it cooks, he sits staring at all the good-luck and long-life symbols on the walls. Scrolls of red and gold ink, a fat happy porcelain cat with one paw raised in the air. They're charming to look at, but he doesn't believe in luck and he never will. That much hasn't changed.

Other things have changed, because he forced them to -- and now he's pretty sure that Cameron was right, that there's no good answer, only a selection of possible mistakes. He's been so determined not to be the man he was, he's never stopped to ask whether "not who he was" is enough to make him happy.  
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	6. Chapter 6

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They let the television do the talking for them while they eat.

There's a part of Wilson that still wants to coax, _You've got to talk about this, House_, but if he's being objective, that tactic never worked very well. Unless by "working well" one meant "effective at starting fights," but that's really not what Wilson hopes for.

It's been something of a shock to realize he still hopes for anything at all. He thought he'd learned his lesson about that.

House, done with his food, takes the half-empty cartons into the kitchen. There's a solid _thunk_ as they fall into the trash, a waste to which Wilson can't object. They'll be on the road tomorrow and the leftovers won't get used anyway.

Returning, House stands looking at him for a few long seconds before retreating without a word into his room. Wilson knows "good night" when he doesn't hear it. He'll wait, watch something mindless, try to settle his thoughts before he gets the sofa blankets out.

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* * *

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There's nothing but air on the shelf where the blankets used to live.

Apparently, House no longer expects to have company.

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* * *

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Sleep is not coming, and he can tell it won't for a while yet. Wilson considers the Scotch he's been avoiding all this time -- only to find that there's none of the stuff in House's place. It's the first time he's ever seen the House of House with no whiskey on hand; he wonders whether House might have taken the bottle into the bedroom.

Wandering, moving softly in his stocking feet, Wilson looks at this place as if he'd never been here before. There are no photos of House or anyone else, no mementos. It's not that there ever _were_, but the absence seems glaring now. Nothing that's visible here is truly personal. On the shelves, on the walls, everything is music, literature, medicine; there is not a single item that's uniquely, utterly _House_. No giving himself away.__

How untouchable should anyone have to be?__

Wilson runs his fingers on the edges of bookshelves, the gilt sides of closed pages, the warm leather binding of an antique _Candide. _Voltaire rubs shoulders with Stephen King; House is many things, but he's never been a snob. In no mood for either philosophy or horror, Wilson picks up Elmore Leonard, hoping for a mystery he can actually _solve_.

He might as well be illiterate tonight. His eyes bounce right off the page, and he gives up, putting the book back precisely where it was, lining up its edge with the faint mark in the bookshelf dust.__

All at loose ends, he drifts over to the piano, his hands following the long curves of its side. His mind finds rest here, so he stops, palms down on the cool surface. For some time he stands that way, keeping the company of his reflection in the lacquer. A creaking floorboard breaks his trance; he startles, as if he's been caught doing something wrong.

"I moved the blankets," says House, standing in the hall.

"I'm ... surprised you didn't burn them."

"Go to sleep, you idiot." House ducks back through the door of his bedroom and emerges with those familiar old blankets in his grip. He throws the whole wad of them in Wilson's general direction. "You have to drive tomorrow."

"Yeah." He really doesn't want to be picking up after House again, but if he wants to sleep he'll need whatever comfort he can get. Wilson plucks the blankets from the floor.

They still smell just like the leather of the sofa.  
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	7. Chapter 7

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"Wake up, honey," Amber says to him, and Wilson does, and immediately wishes he hadn't. She is, of course, not there.

From the room down the hall, he can hear -- barely -- a steady rhythm, one he knows from a few of his other nights here. House is up and moving, pacing, the way people pace when they're in too much pain to lie still.

One kind of hurt has led to another, as it always does for House, and House is hiding in there, trying to will it away instead of using the one thing that will help. The thing House keeps in _here_, in the living room, on a shelf so high that chair-climbing is required to get to it. House can't tell discipline from punishment, not when it comes to himself.

The chair waits in the corner by the guitars. Wilson gets up. He has to do this or neither of them will get any rest.

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* * *

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He had expected the door to be firmly shut, and it isn't; it's cracked barely open. That fact should not make strange emotions rise up in his throat, but it does.

"House." He calls softly from the hall, not willing to barge in, not now.

"Leave me alone."

"No. I ... _think_ I'm still your physician of record."

"Go to hell."

"Come on, House."

The noises get closer, the door swings open, and there's House staring at him, _into_ him, eyes resting only a split second on the metal box in Wilson's hand. This is the thing House resists, and resists, and resists. "I know you're a stubborn jackass," Wilson says, "but you still need to sleep."

"Hypocrite," says House, presumably because Wilson's not sleeping either, though the accusation might be valid on any number of counts. He snatches the morphine kit and this time, when he shuts the door, he shuts it firmly in Wilson's face. Pain is private, as it always has been.

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* * *

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Wilson lies on the sofa, up to his chin in soft, familiar blankets, waiting for the Xanax he finally took to _finally_ kick in.

Twenty minutes; twenty one; twenty-two. _Will this night never end?_ It sounds like even House is finally asleep, and -- _oh God_.

Oh, God, he's stupid now and paranoid, but if the worst thing that could happen has happened once already, who's to say it won't happen again? What was he _thinking_, handing over enough morphine to kill a woolly mammoth?

Unsteady on his feet, Wilson creeps down the hall, turns the bedroom doorknob with as little noise as he can manage.  
House, in the filtered streetlight from outside, looks like a sleeping ghost. Breathing, stirring a little as Wilson approaches but not waking when Wilson touches fingers to his throat, checking the strength and pace of his heart. Strong, stronger than it has any right to be after what House has put it through, after what Wilson himself -- he's still not going to think about that. _Not_. He'd had damn good reasons for the things he'd done and said.

If he wanted to, if he really were a murderer, he could kill House right now. Men are dangerous to one another, natural enemies rather than friends, a thing women forget but which is always, always present in the core of the male mind. If Wilson chose, he could go to the kitchen, find one of House's beautiful Japanese knives, and physically finish the thing he began on the day he left. House would never see it coming; he never, ever does.

House knows that about himself, and yet here he is.

Wilson has no idea how long he stands there in the dark, watching -- like the angel he is not -- over his friend.

His _friend_. House is his friend, in the same inevitable, not-anyone's-decision, pointless-to-argue-about-it way that the earth is round and death is final. It's become exhausting, fighting like this to make a choice that was probably never his to make. There's himself and there's House, and this is simply how it is. It _is_. The only question, the one he's too tired to wrangle, is how to change the effects rather than the fact.

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	8. Chapter 8

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He wakes in the morning to the smell of coffee and the prodding of a cane-tip in his ribs.

"Take it back," House says, and a piece of folded yellow paper -- the cashier's check -- flops downward onto Wilson's chest like a dying butterfly.

"House. I ... didn't leave because of this." He picks it up and looks again at the red-printed numbers, a figure both exorbitant and meaningless. "It ... wasn't the money I wanted."

"If I thought it was, you think I'd be giving it back?" House looms like a crane above the sofa, making an easy escape impossible.

"I can't take it."

"It's _yours_, you moron. You bitched enough each time you shelled out."

"That's not the point. I take it, and you'll either think everything's fine, when it isn't, or you ... you'll think I mean thanks for playing, I'm ... _done_." Damn it, he's losing his cool and he hasn't even had his coffee, hasn't even gotten up to pee, for God's sake. "Neither of those things would be true. The fact that I'm here means that I'm obviously not ... not gone. But it doesn't mean we're okay, and will you _move?_ I've got to get up."

House moves, stepping back from the sofa with the tiniest almost-smile at the corners of his mouth. Danger, danger, danger. It's not safe when House looks like that, the hopeful and damaged, sweet, endlessly selfish child peeking through the windows. You let him into your home, you feed him, he loves you, and when you're not looking he burns the place down. It's always an accident and he never, ever learns not to play with the stove.

"Don't look at me like that," Wilson warns, getting up at last. It's already too late, though; the bastard knows he's winning, knows it's only a matter of how long. Folding the check in thirds, Wilson tucks it into his wallet, noting with some surprise that nothing is missing inside.

It's been a very long while since House, presented with an easy opportunity -- a lone wallet unguarded on the wild prairie of the coffee table -- didn't steal from him. _Borrow, actually_, corrects a part of Wilson's mind that he can't seem to silence, _if the size of the check is any indication_.

Looking up, he sees House in the kitchen, resolutely ignoring him while pouring two cups of coffee. It's nine in the morning and the lines and shadows of House's face look like it's midnight on a sixteen-hour shift.

_The bastard is winning, all right_, Wilson thinks, _but which bastard?_

.

* * *

.

"Give me the keys," says House, while they're halfway through hash browns and bacon at the First Light Cafe.

"I thought I was driving. Or did you forget something at --"

"We're not going to the funeral."

"What?"

"She won't know. She won't care."

"You will. Maybe not now, but --"

"My dad will be upset. He'll miss one more chance to tell me what a screwup I am and that I never called her enough. I'm not going."

"House."

"What's the point? Look at a body that isn't her anymore; lie to a bunch of strangers by pretending I want anything to do with my wonderful, _loving_ father?" House sips more coffee, looking, if anything, more exhausted than he was an hour ago. "No."

"Then ... don't pretend. Don't behave yourself. But you do ... you did love your mom. You don't have to lie about that."

"I'm not."

"If you don't show up, it's the same as saying she meant nothing to you." Wilson stops, waits until House looks him in the eye. "Only reason I went to Amber's," he continues. "I ... didn't want to. I hated every minute of it. You will, too."

"They oughta get you to write the brochures. You make it sound so appealing."

"You loved her. She was the only good thing about your life at home, and ... you need to do this."

"Funny. The way you say that, I might almost think we were friends."

"Don't. Just ... not now." He's not ready for this, not strong enough yet to tell the truth and then prevent the consequences -- whatever House will do, whatever pattern of disaster they'll create for each another this time around.

"_Now_, or I limp out of here, call a taxi, and disappear until it's over. You want me to do this, I need _one God damn person_ on my side, because I promise you my dad isn't."

_So there it is_. House and his father have been decades at war, and House is right. There's nothing fair in asking a man to tread grieving and alone into hostile territory. It's _spectacularly_ unfair if the man in question is Gregory House, whose defective armor won't stop the bullets but does keep the medics from treating the wounds.

"It ... it can't be the way it was." Wilson takes a breath, hands over his card to the waitress without thinking twice. Once she's gone again, he continues. "I'm not ... I have to look out for myself. It has to _change_, House, but ..."

The moment Wilson stops talking, House starts to get up. "We're friends or we're not."

"We ... we're ... in ICU, on life support, but ... yeah. We're friends."

"Your medical metaphors are lame," House says, but he's sitting back down.

"That's all you have to say?"

"Am I calling a cab right now?" House has hunched over the table like a cowed, defeated convict, not a guy who just got what he wanted. Grief; this is grief, the one thing Wilson should recognize best. House pretends inhumanity so well that it's easy to play along, forget, stab thoughtlessly at him and then stand bewildered in the growing pool of blood.

_Actions, not words_. House calls you an idiot a thousand times and when you ask him to put his life on the line for you, he does it. For the people he loves, there are no questions asked.

"Let's go," Wilson says, signing the check the moment it hits the table.

House, unmoving, stares at him. "You said I'd be buying breakfast. Last night."

"Your twenty-four hours of free food haven't run out yet. Take the bereavement perks while you can get them." Wilson drains the last of his coffee and gets up, pretending not to hear the quiet exhalation -- the pain -- when House follows suit. "Let's get this over with. There's only one other stop I need to make on the way."

House moves fast, as he sometimes does when he's really hurting; the sooner he's out to the car the sooner he can sit again. "Luscious Lila's Lipstick Lounge?" he asks, as they push their way out the door. It's a good try, Wilson thinks, but House's heart just isn't in it. All the same, a try is worth something, no matter what House says.

"No, I ... have to stop at the bank."

They climb into the car, House seeming to study him all the while, watching for every changing angle. "We'll hit Lila's on the way back, then."

"I'm not in the mood for strippers lately," Wilson says -- and all movement from the man beside him abruptly stops. "Dead girlfriend thing," Wilson adds. "You wouldn't know. Can we just ... get dinner instead?"

"You're driving. Your call. Your bank is --"

"Two blocks up, on the right. I haven't forgotten." While Wilson merges into traffic, House is shifting around, digging in his pocket. _Good; he'll need to prevent the pain from --_

"You'll want this." House interrupts his thoughts, leaning over to shove a slip of folded yellow paper into the pocket of Wilson's shirt. The _check_, the one last seen nestled safely in the depths of Wilson's wallet.

"House, _why_ ... you told me to --" He realizes he's swerving when another driver leans on the horn. "Never mind. But if it doesn't clear, you're buying dinner from now on."

There's no reply from the passenger seat, so Wilson looks over, not realizing he's just said "from _now on_" until he sees that tiny, tentative, dangerous smile taking hold on House's face.

"Cool," says House. "You just missed the turn."

"There _are_ other banks in the world," Wilson says, feeling like he's about to plunge into a deep, dark ocean. Anything could happen, and it probably will. "Let's just get out of here."

House nods, leans his seat all the way back, and is fast asleep before they even hit the freeway.

.

.

~end~


End file.
